Yeah I have checked out the Fractal Design XL. It is currently my top choice if I would build a new system today. But it won't allow me to have more HDDs than the P180 I have now (I have a 4-in-3 bay in my P180, and in many cases I can not fit a 4-in-3 + fan controller + DVD burner). (Oh, and they made the P183 ugly .)

Arbutus wrote:

This is a top 10 worst case for building a silent computer. Everything about this case is the opposite of what you want for a silent build.

These are the major flaws for a silent build:

> there is an acoustic leak on the right side> there is an acoustic leak on the left side> there is an acoustic leak on the top> there is an acoustic leak on the front

I know it is not one of the greatest cases for silence. But compared to the other tons-of-HDD cases I saw, this one was looking much sturdier, and it has less grill and side windows nonsense than many of them as well.

The Sonata Pro would be a horrible choice for me. I would have to kick out most of my HDDs, and it probably won't fit my videocard. It also does not look like it will cool a medium to high end gaming system well enough.

Yeah I have checked out the Fractal Design XL. It is currently my top choice if I would build a new system today. But it won't allow me to have more HDDs than the P180 I have now (I have a 4-in-3 bay in my P180, and in many cases I can not fit a 4-in-3 + fan controller + DVD burner). (Oh, and they made the P183 ugly .)

I no longer use opticals on my server build, you can always move to an external usb optical drive and use the XL + 4in3 + 5.25 fan controller, this should net you 14hdds, thats what i would do. If you need more hdds... then start considering a norco case.

Yeah I have checked out the Fractal Design XL. It is currently my top choice if I would build a new system today. But it won't allow me to have more HDDs than the P180 I have now (I have a 4-in-3 bay in my P180, and in many cases I can not fit a 4-in-3 + fan controller + DVD burner). (Oh, and they made the P183 ugly .)

I no longer use opticals on my server build, you can always move to an external usb optical drive and use the XL + 4in3 + 5.25 fan controller, this should net you 14hdds, thats what i would do. If you need more hdds... then start considering a norco case.

No I won't really need more than that. Between 12 and 16 is a good number for me. I'll look into external opticals if I do not find something that is even better than the Fractal XL .

I have considered the Norco cases, but are roughly just as expensive as this Cosmos case and I dislike almost all of their aspects aside from the amount of HDDs. I am very picky, because I am still stubborn enough to want only 1 machine, and use it for gaming, overclocking, daily use, server, and keep it silent.

I can see why you like the cosmos II, similar to XL, has 6 hdd bays on the bottom and i think 5 on top. But the plus that i do see on the cosmos II is that if the hot plug slots are removable and you end up with pure 2x 5.25 slots you could install the fan controller + optical drive + 4n3, this is if the 2x slots are removable. I would probably wait a little because of Lawrence Lee comment,

Quote:

Stay tuned

My guess is SPRC recieved a sample, as so many sites just got one, so we might see a review from SPRC soon, then you can see if you go with the cosmos II or the XL.

jjwa wrote:

I am very picky, because I am still stubborn enough to want only 1 machine, and use it for gaming, overclocking, daily use, server, and keep it silent.

Personally i would recommend against, i would prefer to have a separate server accessible via network, that way you can even place it outside your hearing range, 14 hdds will be noisy regardless of how the setup ends, specially if you use a raid array and uses a lot of drives together. A seperate server also allows you to use an OS more oritented for for serving, backup, etc, like for example unRaid that allow to spin down drives that are not in use, you can also use a very low CPU like an atom (well depends on your needs), but this way you also upgrade when you need it, and leave you normal PC with a SSD and if you want a local single hdd for local storage, this would end up imo as more quiet setup. But here is more about personal needs and preferences.

I can see why you like the cosmos II, similar to XL, has 6 hdd bays on the bottom and i think 5 on top. But the plus that i do see on the cosmos II is that if the hot plug slots are removable and you end up with pure 2x 5.25 slots you could install the fan controller + optical drive + 4n3, this is if the 2x slots are removable. I would probably wait a little because of Lawrence Lee comment,

Exactly for that reason I have already asked if the X-things can be removed, and they can.

Abula wrote:

Quote:

Stay tuned

My guess is SPRC recieved a sample, as so many sites just got one, so we might see a review from SPRC soon, then you can see if you go with the cosmos II or the XL.

I would be happy to see an SPCR review on it . Many reviewers pay little attention to for example how dampening the mounting of the HDDs is.

Abula wrote:

jjwa wrote:

I am very picky, because I am still stubborn enough to want only 1 machine, and use it for gaming, overclocking, daily use, server, and keep it silent.

Personally i would recommend against, i would prefer to have a separate server accessible via network, that way you can even place it outside your hearing range, 14 hdds will be noisy regardless of how the setup ends, specially if you use a raid array and uses a lot of drives together. A seperate server also allows you to use an OS more oritented for for serving, backup, etc, like for example unRaid that allow to spin down drives that are not in use, you can also use a very low CPU like an atom (well depends on your needs), but this way you also upgrade when you need it, and leave you normal PC with a SSD and if you want a local single hdd for local storage, this would end up imo as more quiet setup. But here is more about personal needs and preferences.

At the moment these unusual preferences are because I am a student, with only 1 room to call my own. So splitting it into multiple systems won't mean I can place it where I can't hear it. I also have no specific experience with or need for a more server-oriented OS at the moment. Another reason for me was the starting costs of building a separate server if I already have a heavy duty system with a large case that can take on the other tasks as well. And fancy storageservers or 4+ HDD NAS systems (when not self-built) are often quite expensive. But I will probably start using a separate server in 1 or 2 years time .

The review writes roughly what I expected. Awesome specs, silence not so terrible and not so great, with a price that will hurt you! I would love to have this case . But I guess this is one to buy for a second hand price in 3 years . Or Cooler Master could send me one for free, I would be willing to accept that too.

Holes in cases aren't that bad actually. It depends on situation. If you don't have mechanical HD's it may be a better idea to build an open, well-ventilated case with big fans.

With good ventilation the fans don't need to spin that much so they don't make a lot of noise. Examples of this are Silverstone's 90 degree rotated mobo cases like Raven 2 and Fortress 2.

When you have a case where airflow isn't that good fans need to spin faster to keep the temps down, or you need more fans which still make more noise.

These days it's so easy to cool even most demanding gfx cards & cpu's like HD7970 or 3960X reasonably quietly by installing more optimized aftermarket heatsinks. Mechanical HD's are the only real problem when it comes to noise.

I am still on the search for a case which could help reduce noise of about 10 hdds and sofar the Cosmos II seems the best candidate... I wonder how well the coming 900d from Corsair will be in that aspect ?

I am still on the search for a case which could help reduce noise of about 10 hdds and sofar the Cosmos II seems the best candidate... I wonder how well the coming 900d from Corsair will be in that aspect ?

I am still monitoring this topic, for the same reason :).

I think the Cosmos II is still better than the Corsair 900D for a huge amount of drives, I have not added the Corsair to my list.

So while I was daydreaming about that case a while back I opened MS Paint and imagined what you could do if you can buy some extra HDD carriages:(Using B instead of A could leave enough space for a decent size GPU.)

Isn't that beautiful? :D

Plus three 5,25" bays still empty, where you can put a 4-in-3 mount or even a 6-in-3 (if you count 2 SSDs) like this Lian Li kit. My edited picture makes it look like the wrong amount of drives, but from the original pictures you can see that each full stack is 8 HDDs, so two stacks + a Lian Li kit is 8+8+4 HDDs (and 2 SSDs). So total 20 HDDs and 2 SSDs :D.

Of course with 15-20 drives this will not be extremely silent :P. The drives are mounted on rubber grommets, that helps. The rows of HDD brackets is what enables this crazy number of HDDs, but it also blocks a lot fo the airflow from the front of the case to the rear, so you will have to try out what works best for that.

Other good news is that Nanoxia will release two bigger cases in the future :). The first one will be not much bigger than the DS1, after that they will present a really huge case. All cases will be designed as silent cases. But that will take time.

So for now, the Nanoxia Deep Silent 1 is on top of my list :). One other very important reason for that: the Deep Silence 1 costs €100 and the Cosmos II €300!

I am still on the search for a case which could help reduce noise of about 10 hdds and sofar the Cosmos II seems the best candidate... I wonder how well the coming 900d from Corsair will be in that aspect ?

I tried to suspend my hdd and the result was good for already silent hdds and without any effect on "bad" hdd for which I found out the only viable solution are Scythe's Himuro HDD Cooler (with of course the use of the excellent hdsentienl).

Of course the good way to deal with my "bad" (noisy) hdds would be to change them...

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